Food service facilities (e.g., hospitals and correctional facilities) often provide meals to a large number of individuals using food trays. Some of these trays are disposable, while others are reusable. Certain types of food trays are manufactured using injection molding. The cost of an injection mold suitable for molding a tray is relatively high, requiring the production and sale of a high volume of trays to amortize the cost. In the past, molders produced trays based on the common needs of many facilities together to provide enough sales volume to be commercially feasible. However, many food service facilities have needs for food trays that are different from standardized trays, particularly in layout and design, yet one food service facility typically cannot afford the high volume of trays required to justify a new injection mold for a customized tray. As such, in the past it has not been commercially feasible to design and build a customized mold for the relatively low tray volumes needed by one facility.
Typically, the standardized food trays offer a basic layout of a food tray. This layout may include one compartment for a drink, a compartment for an solid entrée, a compartment for a side dish, and may include a compartment for flatware. In some facilities, certain of these compartments may never be used due to the facilities' particular needs. For example, a facility that serves soup may need a soup compartment, and may not be able to utilize a compartment for meat or other solid entrée products. As such, facilities may have to handle soup bowls separately to serve with standardized food trays that are not designed to handle bowls. Similarly, depending on the needs of the facility, various compartments on a standardized food tray are underutilized, causing work-arounds in serving and other inefficiencies. There remains a need for a customizable food trays to meet the needs of each facility in a cost effective manner thereby reducing the inefficiency and work-arounds created by mis-matched or unused tray compartments.